Tim O’Brien

Nov. 29 • 20th Century Theatre

When Tim O’Brien plays guitar, mandolin or fiddle, the
result could generally be described as Bluegrass. But it also represents
the breadth of his myriad influences (Bluegrass, Folk, Country, The
Beatles) and his startling ability to incorporate them into his personal
style.

O’Brien heard his first Bob Dylan album at 12 years old
and subsequently taught himself his three primary instruments; by high
school, he and older sister Mollie were gigging at local churches and
coffeehouses in their native West Virginia. In 1973, O’Brien dropped out
of college and moved to Boulder, Colo., where he meshed perfectly with
the scene.

O’Brien founded Hot Rize with Charles Sawtelle, Pete
Wernick and Nick Forster in 1978, and for the next dozen years the
quartet blended traditional Bluegrass and Pop melodicism for a sound
steeped in history but burnished to a contemporary shine.

O’Brien had released two albums on his own before Hot
Rize’s 1990 dissolution; he signed with RCA in 1991 and recorded his
first real solo album, Odd Man In, but the label shelved it and dropped him, ending his major label association.

For the next six years, O’Brien released an album annually
with Sugar Hill (he was the International Bluegrass Music Association’s
Male Vocalist of the Year for 1993 and 2006), then put out a trio of
albums before returning to Sugar Hill for the bookended Cornbread Nation and Fiddler’s Green in 2005, earning a Traditional Folk Album Grammy for the latter.

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4. Then came the
release of this year’s self-deprecatingly titled live album, We’re Usually a Lot Better Than This,
which reached No. 3. Labels hardly matter to Tim O’Brien, though; in
his hands, it’s all music and in his translation, it’s all good.